Hyung Jin Moon (right) of the church of the sanctuary joins his parishioners for a ceremony for the recipient of weddings
Epa/Jim Lo Scalzo
This is the end of an extraordinary judicial showdown. On July 3, 2025, the Court of Appeal of the Columbia District put an end to one of the longest litigation linked to the succession of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church, also called sect Moon. In the background: the transfer of a fortune of several hundred million dollars in a foundation in Zug.
American justice rejects all the requests made by the widow of the Reverend Hak Ja Han Moon and his younger son, Hyung Jin Moon (alias Sean), against their rival Preston Moon, eldest son of the deceased guru. The judges believe that the disputed decisions of the latter are an internal religious conflict, and that the civil courts cannot decide on this kind of dispute under the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
Half a mini-milliard transferred to Zug
In September 2022, Gotham CityrevealedExternal link That the branch led by Preston Moon had transferred around $ 500 million in assets from the United States to a Swiss Foundation, the Kingdom Investments Foundation (KIF). Created in 2010 in ZugExternal link In a glass building housing 139 mailboxes, this entity now escapes any supervision of the official church. This would countExternal link 3 million faithful, mainly in Korea and Japan.
The church has often been accusedExternal link to extort money from his flocks, through compulsory “tithes”, significant donations or promises of salvation in exchange for money. Japanese lawyers specializing in these “spiritual sales” have documented many cases of ruined families, notably in Japan, the main financial reservoir of the movement.
“The dream of a life”
The assets transferred to the Swiss Foundation included participations in two gigantic real estate projects in Seoul-“Central City Limited” and “Parc1”, a 69-storey skyscraper-, as well as a ski resort, a construction company and two million dollars in liquidity.
According to Preston Moon, the transfer was aimed at bypassing the poor reputation of the church with Korean banks and allowing the completion of the Parc1 project1, presented as “the dream of a life” of his father.
But the operation was done without informing either the reverend widow, the historic Japanese branch of the church, nor Sean Moon. Believing that Preston Moon had diverted the organization’s resources to put them at the service of his own religious vision, his opponents have seized justice in Washington.
Religious freedom … or abuse of power?
In 2019, the complainants had obtained a first success. A court of first instance had ordered the dismissal of Preston Moon and its allies of the Board of Directors of the Waning Organization, Unification Church International (UCI), and the restitution of the assets transferred to the Foundation.
But Preston Moon immediately called upon, invoking the first amendment, which guarantees religious freedom and prohibited the State to interfere in the internal affairs of confessions.
The Court of Appeal partially agreed to her in 2022. She considered that a civil court could not judge whether Preston Moon had or not of the “religious” objectives of the organization or not, nor to determine who was the real spiritual successor of the Reverend Moon.
There remained an opening: the complainants could still try to prove fraud or personal enrichment, which would have made it possible to apply an exception, very limited, to the rule of religious abstention.
Closed file
In its decision of July 3, 2025, the court of appeal closes this door. She believes that the complainants did not demonstrate that Preston Moon had drawn a personal benefit from the transfer to the Swiss Foundation. She also notes that none of the accusations of “self-dealing” (interested management) targeted kif in the initial texts of the complaint. It is therefore too late to invoke them. The court also rejects their request to reopen the procedure to include new elements.
The American decision confirms that the Zugoise KIF foundation retains hand over the immense heritage transferred in 2010, without its leaders having to justify itself in court. No new element is brought to the functioning of kif, its governance, or the current use of funds.
Document linked to this article:
Court of Appeal of the District of Columbia – Moon v. Moon (3.7.25)External link
* Founded by investigative journalists Marie Maurisse and François Pilet, Gotham City is a judicial watch newsletter specializing in economic crime.
Each week, she brings in her subscribers the cases of fraud, corruption and money laundering in connection with the Swiss financial center, on the basis of public access documents.